Arguing that a thorough understanding of the institutions of finance is the necessary prerequisite for humanity to regain freedom and establish genuine democracies, this reference is a clarification of the history of the Social Credit movement. From the time England's King William III borrowed money from a group of private individuals for the purpose of war in 1694, finance has been debt-based. As industrialization evolved, people were transformed into propertyless, debt-owning, money-earning slaves. Why this should be so, how it is done, and why the sound body of economic theory known as "social credit" has been studiously ignored by orthodox economic theorizing is thoroughly documented in this work.